Game designer Jeff Freeman dies

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The well-known games designer Jeff Freeman tragically took his own life on September 24th.

For most people he is best known for the work he did on the design of the MMO Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) and its pet system. He was also wrongly branded as the designer who was responsible for the SWG game enhancements most players hated called “New Game Enhancements” (NGE).

In a posting on his own website, Ultima Online lead designer and Star Wars Galaxies creative director Raph Koster said the following about Jeff:

We disagreed about the NGE. But I also knew that when he got blamed for the whole thing, that it was a silly oversimplification, and I said so. It wasn’t fair for him to be the public face of the NGE, but it happened anyway. He spent a huge amount of time talking to the players, talking to people for years afterwards, explaining, apologizing, justifying what he didn’t need to and shouldn’t have had to.

I got word on Monday that Jeff had died unexpectedly over the weekend. I’m not the sort to use euphemisms like “passed.” Today the word is out that he took his own life. And I am still numb, still in shock about it … It was a great eleven years, Jeff, even if we never did get to hang out. But the games were good, whatever people say, and people loved what you made, and that counts for a lot in my book. Maybe everything.

I still remember a young kid showing his older brother a program he wrote where a red ball bounced on a screen. He was so excited … I thought, ‘What’s the big deal?’ But I knew he was special. He had a mind like no one I knew, he was truly a brilliant man, and I will miss him everyday.

I want everyone to know that it was not SWG that lead him to take his life … He has been troubled for sometime. There were [a lot] of personal issues that tore at him. Regardless of how SWG turned out, we must admit that many of the great things we enjoyed about [the pre-combat update game] was because of his work.

Our thoughts are with Jeff’s friends and family at this difficult time.